Chapter 3: Claiming What's His
The words hung in the air, a cold splash after the heat. Maria took another slow drink from the whiskey bottle, the burn in her throat nothing compared to the ache blooming everywhere else. Her body felt used, thoroughly and exactly as she’d craved, but the emptiness was returning, colder now.
“I know,” she finally said, her voice hoarse.
He stood up from the couch, his back to her, and ran a hand through his short blonde hair. The muscles in his shoulders were taut. He didn’t look like a pushover now. He looked like a man holding a fault line together. “Then get up,” he said, quieter. “Get up and go.”
She moved, each motion reminding her of where he’d been. The slickness on her thighs was a cooling testament. She pulled the tattered remnants of her panties up, the ruined lace a useless scrap. Her soaked sweater was heavy. She stood, her legs unsteady.
But she didn’t walk to the door. She looked at his back, at the tense line of him outlined by the lamplight. The silent television flashed blue across his skin.
“Joe.”
He didn’t turn.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, he did. His blue eyes were stormy, conflicted, the anger banked but still glowing in the depths. He saw her there, shivering, clothes torn, hair a wild mess of curls, his own come drying on her skin. A masterpiece of ruin.
“Take me to your bed,” she said. It wasn’t a plea. It was a statement, low and clear.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Why?”
“Because I’m not done,” she whispered. “And you’re not done punishing me.”
For a long moment, he just stared. Then, wordlessly, he turned and walked down the short hallway. He didn’t check to see if she followed. He knew she would.
His bedroom was a quiet shock after the living room. It was neat, almost impersonal, but the air was thick with the scent of him—soap, clean cotton, and underneath it, that faint, musky trace of sex from the couch. The bed was large, the comforter a deep navy, pulled back hastily as if he’d risen from it to answer her knock. On the nightstand, a single framed photo faced down. She knew what it was. Their engagement photo, taken on a beach, both of them laughing, squinting into a sun that felt a million miles away now.
He stopped at the foot of the bed and turned to face her. The earlier fury was gone, replaced by a grim, focused intensity. “Clothes. Off.”
Her fingers, numb with cold and adrenaline, fumbled with the hem of her soaked sweater. She peeled it over her head, the wet wool clinging. Her bra followed. The air in the room was cool on her bare skin, her nipples hardening instantly. She pushed the torn panties down her legs again, letting them fall to the floor with a soft, wet sound.
She stood naked before him, in the bedroom of the man she’d left. The vulnerability was absolute, more terrifying than when he’d had his hand on her throat. This was a surrender he had to choose to accept.
He closed the distance between them in two strides. His hands weren’t gentle as they gripped her hips, his fingers pressing hard into her soft flesh. He walked her backwards until her knees hit the edge of the mattress and she tumbled down onto the cool cotton sheets. He followed her down, kneeling between her splayed legs, his gaze fixed on the thatch of dark curls, glistening still with the evidence of their first joining.
He didn’t touch her there, not at first. He just looked, his breath coming in slow, controlled pulls. Then he bent his head.
The first touch of his tongue was a lightning strike, a flat, broad stroke from her opening all the way up to her clit. She cried out, her back arching off the bed. It wasn’t the tender, teasing love of before. It was deliberate, thorough, claiming. He ate her like a man starving, like he was trying to consume the memory of every other touch, real or imagined, that had come since she’d left.
His mouth was ruthless. His tongue speared inside her, fucking her with slow, penetrating thrusts, tasting himself mixed with her own salt. He sucked her swollen folds into his mouth, his stubble scraping the tender skin of her inner thighs. He zeroed in on her clit, circling it with a focused, relentless pressure that had